The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  Gabby demolished the rest of her focaccia in a couple of healthy bites. Checking the Share Register had given her an appetite. ‘And guess what? Dermatil? It’s a shareholder too. One point two five million. What’s more, the company that owns it – Plato–Crack – 1.5 million shares. Thirteen million bucks plus at today’s share price. The directors of both companies are big shareholders too – and some of the other board members of SP.’

  She sat back in the green booth, picked something from between her teeth, washed it down with water, then wiped some grease from the corner of her mouth. I’ll never know how she makes this look sexy, but she does.

  ‘So,’ she finally said, putting her hands down flat on the orange laminate table between us, ‘what’s all that mean?’

  My mobile phone, provided courtesy of SP, went off at that precise moment, which prevented me from saying, ‘Buggered if I know.’ I held up my hand to Gabby and answered the call.

  ‘Mr Blake?’ the young male voice said down the end of the line. Mr Blake. Jesus. That took me back. I hadn’t been called Mr Blake since, oh, my appearance in the Federal Court’s Bankruptcy List last year.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Craig. From accounts. I have that information you wanted. Your phone call from Monday?’

  ‘Go ahead, mate.’

  He explained to me what each policy was. Just a series of relatively standard policies that most companies or businesses have. Professional negligence, Directors and Officers cover, fire insurance, business interruption insurance, and liability insurance. There were currently no live claims on any of these policies, and the only recent ones were the two matters I’d already found at Penrith. A dead-end.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Craig. Glad I didn’t miss anything. Greatly appreciated.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘There’s just one thing, though,’ he added as I was about to hang up. ‘I don’t know if it means anything, or whether I should say anything . . .’

  ‘Say it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, the premiums for these policies. They seem a bit high. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t really . . .’

  ‘How high?’

  He told me. Fuck a duck. What kind of show was it at the Risqué Pussy? Too good to miss, by the sound of things. And these accountants had to be advising the Saudi government. For both companies – the accountanting firm and the licensee of the RP – the premiums over the last few years totalled almost exactly the payout of the two claims. Slightly more, in fact. I didn’t know precisely what that meant, but a small bulb started glowing in my head. ‘Thanks, Craig,’ I said. ‘They’re really not such huge premiums . . . for the nature of the business,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Keep quiet about this. Commercial-in-confidence, that sort of thing. Best not to discuss my call – Barry Hardcastle wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I won’t say a word,’ he said. He wouldn’t.

  I looked at Gabby when I cut off the call. ‘We really should have gone into that strip club last Friday,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  I told her what Craig had told me. She listened closely, then said, ‘What are you thinking?’

  Quite a lot. That she looked gorgeous eating a focaccia, for one. She smelt great too, even amidst the Lavazza-and-antipasto-drenched aroma of Zanetta’s. I didn’t say this, though. I was picking up a different scent. ‘I don’t know what it means yet,’ I said, ‘but there’s the distinct odour of money laundering coming from my building.’

  Twenty-Three

  Gabby picked me up at five forty-five on Saturday afternoon. She had agreed to come with me when I met Gerton. She was going out, but could squeeze in an hour for me. I’d chosen Saturday. Investigating multiple murders with her was what now passed for a date in my life.

  I’d rung Clarrie Gerton from a phone booth on Wednesday night. Not to speak to him. When he answered, I hung up. I just wanted to make sure he was in town. As with Parsons, I thought a cold call to his house would be the best technique. Try to not sound totally insane when he opened the door.

  It was a cold day, raining on and off, and the wind was now growing steelier and picking up strength. Gabby was wearing a black jumper and had her nose stud in. I thought of mentioning that Clarrie Gerton might think twice about taking someone with a nose stud seriously. Any Clarrie might. Backstabbing, branch stacking, selling out, fighting communism, fighting constitutional liberal democracy, mendacity – these were the skills that the New South Wales right wing of the Australian Labor Party had taught Gerton. Years of training had made him a mediocre but sincere practitioner in all these political arts. A nose stud would send entirely the wrong signal.

  Clarrie would immediately think leftie. Red. Green. Marxist. He would think Trotsky but he wouldn’t know why. Was Trotsky into body piercing? he would think. Yes, I could have told him. Rather dramatically at the end. Worse still, he might think someone genuinely committed to causes, to justice, to the poor, to the abused, to the environment. In other words, one of those misfits that stood for everything and everyone he hated.

  By the time I had thought through the many and varied implications of the nose stud, we were pulling up outside Gerton’s house. After we stopped, I took another look at Gabby’s facial adornment, decided it was a symbol that stood for everything good in human nature against all that was rank, vile and mean, smiled at her, opened the car door, and got out.

  Local and state politics had been rewarding for Clarrie Gerton. He lived near the cliff-face at Lurline Bay in Maroubra, one suburb south of Randwick. From his front yard, or from the wall-to-ceiling windows of his lounge room, the rolling blue of the Pacific Ocean stretched endlessly east. Endlessly east to New Zealand, anyway. Exactly how much cash from exactly how many crooked property developers or contract tenderers it had taken Clarrie Gerton to acquire the funds for his palace on the coast had probably never been calculated. Except perhaps by someone at party head office.

  There were risks involved in talking to Gerton. Even if he was willing to listen to me, unless I could do some persuasive talking, there was every chance either he or his lawyer would be on the phone to South Pacific about my visit first thing Monday morning.

  I was going to keep the message simple. South Pacific was being investigated. I couldn’t say who by, and it was vital he told no one I had seen him. My life could be in danger if he did. If it became necessary, I’d tell him I was working undercover for the cops. I’d reveal that there had been an unlikely run of unfortunate incidents involving plaintiffs with claims against SP that was being looked into. He should sit tight for a while, just a month or two, and call off his legal dogs. He should not under any circumstances allow his lawyers to file his Statement of Claim. He had years left before he had a limitation date problem. Just wait a month, see what result the investigation brought. The enquiries being made might lead to nothing, but there was no point exposing himself to risk if he could afford to back off for a short time. Christ knows what he would make of what I was going to tell him.

  It was starting to get dark, and as we approached the house I could see it was raining out at sea, the sky and ocean melded into one, the horizon lost somewhere behind them. Nervous, when we reached the front door I hit it with the knocker more forcefully than I intended.

  ‘Take it easy, Chris,’ Gabby said, stroking me lightly on the arm. We waited. No response. ‘He would have heard that if he was at home,’ she said.

  I tried again. Not with sufficient force to send the house off the cliff this time, but the knock was loud enough. No response. ‘You should’ve rung before we came to make sure he was here,’ she said.

  ‘His car’s in the drive.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s home. Try again.’

  I did. No one came to the door.

  ‘Have you got his phone number?’ Gabby asked. I nodded. ‘Call him. This wind’s making a lot of noise. Maybe he’s in a back room and can’t hear.’

  I dialled his
number on my mobile phone. I could hear the phone ringing inside. I let it ring three times then disconnected. ‘This is a South Pacific phone,’ I said. ‘I don’t want them to have a record that I called him.’

  Gabby raised her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly. ‘You think they’re that sophisticated, do you? They’ll hunt you down from a mobile phone trace? They’ll be checking those things?’

  I thought about it. Perhaps I was going a little Virginia farm boy on us. It’s only natural when you’re hunting down a corporate serial killer. I shrugged and dialled again. I heard his phone ring five times. Then the answering machine clicked on. I disconnected. ‘Recorded message,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t want to leave one?’

  ‘No.’

  I looked through the pane of glass by the side of the door. It was frosted, and I couldn’t see through it clearly, but there was a light on somewhere down the end of the corridor.

  ‘It’s cold, Chris,’ Gabby said, her hair blowing wildly about her face. ‘If we’re going to wait for him to come home, let’s wait in the car.’

  It was getting dark quickly now, and the salty, sharp wind had turned into a gale as we stood there. I rapped on the door a third time. Again, no one came.

  ‘Maybe he’s out in the backyard,’ I said.

  ‘Gardening, is he?’

  ‘I have to talk to him, Gabby. I’m going around the back to look.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The side gate was closed but not locked. When I opened it, I could see that lights were on in the back room of the house, illuminating the last metre or so of the cement path, and part of the grass in the backyard. Beyond that there was just enough daylight left to see the grey ocean waves and the clouds above, their dark bellies threatening to drench us at any moment. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s going to bucket down any second.’

  We walked quickly down the side path of the house to the back. The wind struck us more fiercely when we reached the end of the path, beyond the protection we’d had between Gerton’s house and his neighbours. I could see no one in the yard, so I turned right and moved quickly to the back door.

  The door was glass, and the lounge room that faced the ocean was also separated from the elements by a wall of glass. A reading lamp was on in the lounge room, providing most of the light. In the ceiling I could see a series of small downlights, glowing only slightly, the dimmer clearly turned to its lowest level. The only other light in the room came from the television, a plasma or LCD job, mounted on the wall, half the size of a cinema screen. The carpet was beige and so was the leather lounge suite. The three-seater had its back to us, facing the television, the idiot box beating the Pacific Ocean in the battle of the views. On the right of the three-seater was a matching recliner chair. Empty.

  On the left of the three-seater was a smoking table. On it was an ashtray, a packet of fags with a disposable lighter on top. Further left, another matching beige recliner. Over the back of it I could see the dome of a bald head, slumped against the left side of the chair. I could see a hand on the right arm of the chair. The hand was clutching a remote control. Down the bottom of the chair, between it and the table, I could see a foot and part of an ankle. The foot was inside a chocolate-brown slipper.

  In the front right-hand corner of the room was a fireplace, but no fire was lit, despite the early winter cold. I turned to Gabby. ‘He’s fucking well asleep,’ I said. ‘Take a look. In front of the telly.’

  She looked, turned to me and smiled. ‘Are you going to knock?’

  I nodded. ‘Loud enough to wake the dead.’

  I tapped lightly on the glass doors. Neither the head nor the leg moved. I rapped more loudly. Still nothing. The news was just finishing on the television. I watched for movement of the hand with the remote. Nothing. ‘He must be in a deep sleep,’ I said. I belted the door. Still nothing. I looked at Gabby. She laughed, then shrugged. ‘You’re going to break the glass if you hit it any harder.’

  I looked at the door handle. I looked at Gabby. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. I grabbed hold of the handle. ‘You’re going in?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s cold,’ I said. ‘If it’s open, I’m going in.’

  She grabbed me by the forearm. ‘He’ll have a heart attack, Chris. Or he’ll go berserk.’

  I grabbed the handle, pressed, heard a click, then under slight pressure the door slid open. The wind howled inside, and Gabby and I hurried after it. I shut the door quickly, but stayed just inside it. We looked at each other again. ‘Well?’ she whispered.

  ‘Mr Gerton?’ I said. Nothing. The TV volume was low. Funniest Home Videos was starting up. About Clarrie’s speed. ‘Mr Gerton?’ I said more loudly.

  ‘Mr Gerton!’ Gabby then said, louder still.

  ‘Clarrie!’ I called. Not a hint of movement. I sighed. Clarrie was as deaf to my calls as he had been to the bewildered cries of those who complained that his faction had steered his party to the dark side. I took a breath and walked around to the front of the chair.

  I had never seen a dead body before. Plenty on television and films, of course, but not in the flesh. In the flesh the dead body of Clarrie Gerton looked the way I expected a dead body to look. I had to adjust my perspective to accommodate the fact that Gerton had never looked particularly good alive. Bald, wrinkled, a mean down-turned mouth, thin lips. He had the perfect face for a retired septuagenarian right-wing politician. The face of an old ferret. Not that I can recall ever seeing a ferret, old or otherwise, dead or alive, left or right, but that’s what he looked like. A chiselling, greedy, dishonest, mean-spirited, dirty old bastard. That’s the best I can do to describe him given that I would never speak ill of the dead.

  Gerton’s mouth was open slightly, and whatever his living colour was, his complexion was now alabaster. His eyes were glazed over, and he was wearing a slightly pained expression. He was staring directly at the television. I looked too. Funniest Home Videos ran a tape that appeared to show a small child being decapitated. I could have been wrong. I’d just found a dead body and my sense of perception was probably playing up.

  The immediate cause of death wasn’t obvious. Say what you like about Funniest Home Videos, as far as I know, watching it isn’t fatal. Not unless you have an IQ considerably higher than Clarrie Gerton’s. ‘He’s dead,’ I said, still looking at him. Then I looked at Gabby. ‘He’s fucking dead.’

  The expression on her face soon resembled that of Gerton’s, with just a touch of you must be fucking kidding in the eyes.

  ‘I’m not joking, Gabby,’ I said. ‘He’s bloody carked it.’ And he had. I touched his wrist. Cold, lifeless. My skin crawled. It would have crawled if I had touched Gerton when he was alive, but this was worse. The Hon. Clarrie Gerton was gone. To a place a damn sight hotter than his Arctic lounge room on a Pacific Ocean cliff-top in Sydney, Australia, on the night of a brewing early winter tempest. Off to the room marked ‘Right Wing Factional Heavyweights – Australian Labor Party’. He would have seen the sign on the door, heard a wailing and a gnashing of teeth from the other side. He must have thought he was outside the faction meeting room, that he was still in the old warm world. Then he would have opened the door, and the devils and the snakes and the rats and the worms would have torn at his sullied flesh. For now and forever, amen.

  I was thinking those cheery thoughts, standing in front of Clarrie Gerton, retired Member of Parliament, now deceased, when Gabby came around and joined me. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘He is fucking dead.’

  I nodded. Jesus Christ, indeed. By the look of the death mask poor Clarrie was wearing, he was just in the process of discovering that Jesus of Nazareth was a very big heavyweight in the left faction.

  ‘How?’ Gabby asked. ‘What’s he died of? Has he been killed?’

  I turned slowly and glared at her. The entire forensic capability of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Dick Tracy, Quincy and the cast of CSI would have had trouble working out that one in the time I
’d been given. I said nothing and turned back to the corpse.

  He clearly hadn’t been shot. I could see that. No obvious wounds, no blood. I ruled out stabbing, on the same basis. In front of the left leg was an empty bottle of the appropriately named Bloodwood Graveyard Shiraz, a half empty bottle of Semillon, and an almost empty bottle of scotch. Each bottle had a white sticker on it stating ‘Property of NSW Parliament House – Do Not Remove’. Gerton had been mixing his drinks, thieving from taxpayers, and possibly drinking in the wrong order. I knew from experience none of this was fatal either. There were no obvious bruises on his head, neck, and no defence wounds on his hands or arms. Not that I know what a defence wound is, but I’ve heard about them in cop shows, and I didn’t think Gerton had them. I ruled out bashing and strangulation.

  Two feet in front of Gerton’s chair was a dinner tray, with a plate and three Chinese takeaway containers on it. Upon examination they contained the remnants of a tom yum soup, honey chicken, and special fried rice with prawns. Salmonella? MSG? Unlikely. I couldn’t see a dodgy prawn or undercooked chicken being the culprit.

  I was down to three likely CODs. 1: Poisoning by some means. 2: Natural causes. 3: Prolonged exposure to commercial television. While I tried to calculate the odds of each of these three being the felon, Gabby said: ‘How long? How long do you think he’s been . . . ?’

  This time I said something. ‘How the hell would I know?’

  She shook her head angrily. ‘I don’t know, Chris. Is he cold?’

  ‘Stony,’ I said. I pointed to his hand, still squeezing the life out of the remote control. ‘That looks like rigor mortis to me.’

  ‘So . . . hours?’ she said.

  I thought about it. I looked at Gerton. I didn’t think he was obviously decomposing, but it was hard to tell. He had been on a road of rapid self-inflicted decomposition for years. Taking bribes and kickbacks half your life is stressful. It adds a few wrinkles, causes flaky, decaying patches of skin, and scar tissue around the heart. Then there were the eight questions and two speeches he’d had to give in fourteen years on the backbenches of parliament, some of which had been so unfairly spent without a guaranteed parliamentary pension. Then he had been forced to ask his staff to prepare the reports for those study tours he’d taken to Europe. Working out how to operate a 6-star bidet can age a man.